DOMINANT ANGLE
Pretoria focuses on an attack on the food cold chain: South African press, via wire copy, presents it as infrastructure sabotage causing fires and food losses, with ANSSI called in and Europe alerted.
Dominant angle identified — does not reflect unanimity of this country’s media
KEY POINTS
- 01
According to the wire dispatch, refrigerators in several hundred stores were heated up to 50 °C, causing fires and food losses.
- 02
Carrefour reports 80 supermarkets hit, Monoprix 5% of its stores, and Les Mousquetaires about 150 stores for six hours.
- 03
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has tasked ANSSI, and Sekoia says Spain, Portugal, Poland, Germany and Belgium are also affected.
ANALYSIS
Pretoria has no reading of its own on this affair: South African coverage rests on a wire dispatch by Leo Marchandon and Gabriel Stargardter, published on October 12 by Daily Maverick and TimesLIVE under near-identical headlines: “Hackers heat French supermarket fridges”.
The account opens on the scale. Hackers forced the temperature of many refrigerators up to 50 °C overnight, causing “fires and food losses” in several hundred stores. The Paris prosecutor's office speaks of a “large-scale” attack hitting “connected refrigerators” at several major retail chains. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has tasked the National Cybersecurity Agency of France (ANSSI) with investigating, according to a person close to him.
Figures are given chain by chain. Carrefour says 80 supermarkets were hit, but not the vast majority of its 6,000 stores. Monoprix, which has about 490 stores in France, reports 5% affected. Les Mousquetaires, owner of Intermarché, mentions about 150 stores whose fridges were heated for six hours, and a spokesperson says all the food concerned was thrown away to rule out any health risk. E.Leclerc and Auchan did not respond to requests for comment.
The text also paints a concrete picture: a Paris resident, Geert de Clercq, saw Intermarché employees throwing entire trolleys of thawed frozen food into a skip, the melted ice running onto the road.
The head of Coopérative U, Dominique Schelcher, wrote on X that targeting equipment essential to keeping fresh products and supplying the French is “extremely serious” and “unprecedented”. Intermarché CEO Thierry Cotillard spoke on BFM TV.
The European dimension is relayed: France is coordinating with its counterparts, as other countries may be affected. Felix Aime, an analyst at Sekoia, cites Spain, Portugal, Poland, Germany and Belgium. TimesLIVE adds that Ahold Delhaize, parent company of Albert Heijn, is facing a “security issue” and has taken several systems offline.
Neither of the two reprints identifies a perpetrator, and the dispatch puts no figure on overall losses for the sector at this stage.
